Dear Editor:
Of course communities need to be kept together as they are and not split up, as seems to be done for elections.
The motivation behind electoral reassignment is making all ridings approximately have the same population. Every few years we have this squabble about fairness.
However, the imbalance of being elected with fewer than half the votes has been amply pointed out. There is sometimes thrown up the notion of having a second or third choice when voting as was done in the '50s and twice voted down more recently. What is really wrong is that we have riding elections, not provincial or national.
The idea that an elected member of the house actually represents the people of the riding is nonsense, for they always only represent their own party. To satisfy any doubt on this subject one need only check any member's voting record.
The only way of fairness is a true proportional representation where all the votes in all the ridings for each party are added together, ascertaining what percentage of the vote each party gets and therefore gets the same percentage of seats.
This will bring on the likelihood of coalition, continuing the probability of a lopsided government even though proportional representation is achieved.
This problem is easily denied if all the elected are part of the government truly cooperating on what legislation comes to pass. After all, this is why we voted for them.
Terry Smith, by email
